The Law of Averages
You will always revert to your mean
Daily Meditation — 4/10/2022
When we are down and out, feeling the intense gravity of failure like a sticky quicksand around us, depression ruling over us, it feels like each day trickles by.
It feels like you are being bludgeoned to death by misfortune and mistakes…
When we are flying high and winning, the opposite feeling takes hold. You feel unstoppable! You’re winning hand after hand at life who keeps dealing you exactly what you need!
It feels like you’re on top of the world, and lady luck is draping her arms over your shoulders.
However, all too easy do we forget that so much of life comes down to simple concepts…
The law of averages is one.
When we are down in the quagmire of depression and failure, life tends to pull us out and back to our baseline…
When we are knocking it out of the park with endless dopamine hits of success, likewise, life finds a way to smack us back down to our baseline…
Remember the Bell curve!
If you are winning hand after hand in life, it may be a good time to “take profits” by stopping and speaking forth gratitude, because these continued profits — good health, solid relationships, actual wealth — are not promised.
Just like when you are beaten down, every day it is hard to get out of bed and you have fleeting thoughts of giving it all up…
Stop and consider deeply what is still going well! Speak gratitude for the small things!
You’ve still got hot showers? Be grateful.
You can still afford ramen or cereal? Grateful!
You still have the ability to spend time with your children after divorce? Be grateful!
As we discuss deeply in “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing…”
Gratitude is the foundation and the roof we build over the Eudaimonic structure.
Though we make 4 walls of physical wellness, spiritual wellness, relationship wellness and financial wellness, we must lay the foundation on gratitude and place a protective roof of gratitude over this home or otherwise it erodes from beneath or the elements of life intrude and rot it from above!
In the end, it is the same feeling that we feel when we are doing great or losing — it is inertia.
Just remember — this isn’t forever.
You will return to your average.
No matter what, speak gratitude each day unceasingly!
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
